1. Field
The disclosure relates in general to the field of cloud management systems, and in particular to a method for handling locale and language in a cloud management system and a system for handling locale and language in a cloud management system. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a data processing program and a computer program product for handling locale and language in a cloud management system.
2. Background
Cloud management systems need to be multilingual to accommodate users across the world. In current technologies, Web2.0 and server side language selection and validation are used, which have several limitations. Current server-side solutions determine and validate the user locale and language on the server. For example, JSP uses server side Java-based globalization. Some service management systems could solve that through Java use of separate language and locale handling, while this is not possible inside most JavaScript-based Web2.0 framework environments. Common client-side solutions including JavaScript-based solutions use IP addresses, or Web-browser locales to specify the language of the user interface with which the user interacts. Both schemes are not adapting to dynamic server languages and corresponding user dependencies.
Existing server based applications manage locale and language separately, wherein locales are used for formatting of time, numbers, currencies etc., and languages are used for translation. In certain scenarios, the application maintains the language setting chosen by user in the application preferences. In other prior art applications the language is extracted from the list of browser accept language(s).
According to prior art applications language and locales are either handled separately by the system, or combined locales are created from two default locales which are known by the system.
In the Patent Publication U.S. Pat. No. 6,339,755 B1 “METHOD, SYSTEM AND DATA STRUCTURE FOR SPLITTING LANGUAGE AND LOCALE PROPERTIES IN A DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM” by Hetherington et al. an implementation of separate language and locale properties within a data processing system is disclosed. The language property only controls selection of the human language employed for user interface text and, preferably, the sort order for text-based items displayed in the user interface. The locale property controls all other cultural support, number format, date format, currency and currency format, time format etc. This split allows a particular language to be selected without utilizing a particular set of cultural conventions associated with a region in which the selected language is dominant.
In the Patent Publication U.S. Pat. No. 6,073,090 “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR INDEPENDENTLY CONFIGURING INTERNATIONAL LOCATION AND LANGUAGE” by Fortune et al. a system and method for independently configuring international location and language in a computer system are disclosed. In the disclosed system and method composite locales for user-selected location and language combinations are generated whenever a user-selected location and language combination is unsupported by default locales. The system includes a location format retrieval element for retrieving location specific formatting data and a language format retrieval element for retrieving language-specific formatting data. Retrieved location-specific and language-specific data are combined to generate a composite locale. The composite locale is generated from default locales, wherein location specific formatting data is retrieved from a first default locale and the language-specific formatting data is retrieved from a second default locale. The composite locale is generated by combining the formatting data retrieved from the first and second default locales. Alternatively, a composite locale is generated from data retrieved from a location database and from a language database.
In the Patent Publication U.S. Pat. No. 5,917,484 “MULTILINGUAL SYSTEM LOCALE CONFIGURATION” by Mullaney computer implemented methods of configuring system locale in a computer system and apparatus for implementing same are disclosed. The disclosed methods comprise presenting a computer user with a multilingual, yet locale independent, language selection screen. It is further described how to select languages and locales in a general manner, e.g. at installation time, using bitmaps to achieve language independency.
All those patents don't describe how to combine languages of connected systems and match them with preferred user languages and locales, and how the default login mechanism works.
In a real-world example a so called Dojo approach, which is a JavaScript framework, a locale of an application is determined by pulling the locale from the browser navigator object. However, developers can force the default locale by using a djConfig locale setting, often done by app servers to establish locale based on user preferences. The Dojo locale must be established at bootstrap time and cannot be changed later. Locales must be specified in all lowercase with dashes separating variants.
In addition to the locale, developers can specify that extra locale files are also downloaded in parallel. The argument to the extra locale parameter is an array of strings representing locales. The extra locale is used only for edge cases like multi-lingual pages or for dynamically switching languages. It is generally more efficient and preferred to switch languages by reloading the page and changing the locale setting. An example use case for extra locale would be a language tutorial—a page in the user's native language that teaches Japanese.
Prior art embodiments may have the problem that a client supports only locale, and a server supports locale and language, wherein locale and language are not intuitive for the self-service user to select and maintain, especially if he is able to create invalid combinations that way. Further simplified locale scheme fits into cloud scenarios where the user doesn't know to which cloud hosts he connects to.